“No way. Ollie already has a trip to Denver planned with Callum for the three-day weekend. But in the future…” I picked up my coffee, though I didn’t feel like drinking it anymore. My stomach was too jumpy. “Maybe I should call my lawyer. See what we can do.”
But those billable hours were expensive, and Grayden’s rent payments had just barely put my finances above water.
“I’m making things harder for you,” Grayden said gruffly.
“What?” My toes wiggled under his thigh. “What would have happened if you hadn’t shown up the day Danny broke in and put his hand on my throat?”
“Piper, I would step in and defend you or Ollie, anytime, anyplace. But Danny can use my history against you. What’ll happen when you speak to your lawyer and you tell her about how Danny has a grudge against your tenant? And how your tenant has a record. If you have to go in front of a judge, how will it look for you to havemeas a friend?”
I hated what Grayden was saying. Yet it did make a twisted sort of sense.
How was it possible that Danny seemed so smooth on the surface, given his clean-cut looks and his Lexus and his professional career, when he had a rotten core underneath?
While Grayden, the truly good man, had a stain that would follow him for the rest of his life.
TWENTY-FOUR
Grayden
Piper looked so downcast.She’d come here for some comfort, and I’d just given her a cold splash of reality.
I took a gulp of the coffee drink Piper had made me.
“Not trying to make you feel bad,” I said. “It’s just something to think about.”
“I hate the world sometimes. So many things aren’t fair.”
“Truer words.”
But Piper was essentially agreeing with me. Her situation would be harder with me around.
I never should’ve kissed her the other day. She was the wiser one to turn me down.
Of course I would never regret defending her, but I could’ve backed down a little with Danny when I confronted him that day. Instead, I’d escalated the tension. Now he hated me, and I worried how far he’d go as a result.
If Piper or Ollie got hurt because of me, directly or indirectly, how could I ever forgive myself?
These were some dark fucking thoughts. Piper deserved some time to relax and smile, and I realized I might have just the thing.
I placed my empty plate on the tray. “Hey, I almost forgot. I found something yesterday in the house. It was behind an olddresser.” Tugging out my wallet, I extracted a folded piece of paper.
Piper took it from me, and her whole face changed as she smoothed out the creases.
“Oh my gosh. I haven’t seen this in ages.”
“It was folded up like that when I found it,” I added.
She touched the photo gently, like she was afraid it might disappear. “No, I’m the one who folded it. Used to keep this in my purse to remind me of better days, I guess.”
Her lips parted slightly as she stared down at the image. It was her and Grace, maybe around eighteen or nineteen years old, with their arms around each other as they laughed. Caught in a moment of pure joy.
“I took this selfie of us during freshman year of college.” Her thumb traced over the image. “Went to the drugstore the next day to have the photo printed out, and I pinned it to the bulletin board in our dorm room.”
My upper body shifted to face Piper, which wasn’t easy given the tight space on this loveseat. My arm draped over the backrest. “You and Grace were roommates in college?”
“You didn’t know that?”
I shrugged, though the empty spaces in my chest echoed with the reminder of what I’d missed. There was far too much I didn’t know about my siblings’ lives.
